Dreaming in Black and White

Today we can reproduce billions of colours and display them with ever-greater fidelity, even in three dimensions. And yet, there’s still an unmistakable charm about good old black and white. It’s still one of the most popular filters for photographs, and film directors often can’t resist its wiles. Small wonder that there is festival celebrating this enduring format. The Black & White Audiovisual Festival has just completed its 12th year and aspiring artist Vitor Teixeira, created the hair-raising Black & White 2015 to promote it.

“Black and white offers such a unique subtlety of tones,” enthuses Vitor. “There is a certain type of emotion – a clarity to see and think differently – that lets you focus on the relationship between form, shape and pattern, without the distraction of colour. It’s both unavoidable and irresistible”.

Vitor was keen to tell us more:

The Plus: Do you usually prefer to work in black and white or colour?
Vitor Teixeira: I don’t have a set preference. I think the overall concept and composition of a work is more important than the colour, or absence of it. My daily project Everyday is a perfect example of this. There is no pattern or predefined idea – I don’t predetermine whether I’m going to use colour or monochromatic tones.

In this series of images, like in any other project that I do, my main concern is to be creative and use the best techniques to impart the finished image with the intended message. I would be lying if I said that black and white didn’t appeal to me, but I think it’s too soon for me to stick to a certain style or identity. I’m still very much developing as an artist, so it’s important for me to experiment rather than stick to a single path.

TP: It looks like as though you took ink as the basis of this video, why is that?
VT: You’re absolutely right. When I started this project there was a certain look that initially I wanted to achieve. One of my favorite pieces that you can find online is the video produced by Troublemakers and weareflink for Central China Television, CCTV Ink. Despite being a few years old, it continues to impress and inspire me.
As the project was moving forward, I felt the need to explore specific effects for every theme of the competition that would convey, in a more clear way, the concept I wanted to transmit. For example, I captured the ‘decisive moment’ of a splash flying, using ink to express a peculiar action or movement.

TP: Are you working on any new projects at the moment?
VT: I’m working on two personal projects at the minute. One is my daily project, that I mentioned, Everyday, it’s mainly ‘educational’. The other is a short piece that will be finished in October. I started it as soon as I finished Black & White and I’m very excited about it because it will be a combination of photography, motion design and 3D (mostly dynamic effects).